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Joby Aviation has been cleared by the FAA to start flight tests on its first production prototype air taxi, the company wrote in a press release. Engadget reports: It's a large step in the company's aim to start shipping the eVTOL aircraft (electric vertical takeoff and landing) to customers in 2024 and launch an air taxi service by 2025. The aircraft can take off and land like a helicopter, then tilt its six rotors horizontally and fly like an airplane at up to 200 MPH. It's designed to carry a pilot and four passengers over a distance up to 100 miles on a charge -- enough range for most types of air taxi operations. At the same time, Joby claims it's nearly silent in cruise mode and 100 times quieter than conventional aircraft during takeoff and landing. With the the FAA's special airworthiness certificate in hand, Joby can perform flight tests of full production aircraft, following tests with full-scale prototypes that began in 2017. In May last year, the company received another crucial permit, the FAA's Part 135 air carrier certificate for commercial operations. It recently teamed with Delta Air Lines to offer travel to and from airports, and its website shows a scenario of flying from downtown NYC to JFK airport in just seven minutes compared to 49 minutes in a car. Now, Joby must clear the largest hurdle with full FAA type and production certification in order to take paying passengers on commercial flights. That's likely about 18 months away, aerospace engineer and Vertical Flight Society director Mike Hirschberg told New Scientist. Its first customer would be the US Air Force, as part of a $131 million contract under the military's Agility Prime program, with deliveries set for 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an opinion piece for NPR, guest host and TV critic on NPR's Fresh Air, David Bianculli, raises concerns about Discovery CEO David Zaslav's track record and the future of Turner Classic Movies (TCM) under his leadership. Here's an excerpt from his piece: When the dismissal was announced recently of most of the people who have guided Turner Classic Movies brilliantly for years -- the programmers, the producers of special material, even the executives who plan the TCM film festivals and party cruises -- many people in Hollywood reacted like there'd been a death in the family. Because, to people who really love movies, that's what the news felt like. [...] Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, in explaining his TCM changes, has said that, among other things, he wants to have filmmakers appear on TCM to curate and present movies of their choosing. Nothing wrong with that. Except you don't have to replace your current management team to make that happen -- and besides, it's already happening. Earlier this year, when Steven Spielberg was promoting his new autobiographical movie The Fabelmans, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz had Spielberg on to select, present and talk about three movies of his choice. The team that's been running TCM for years has been serving up treats like this with regularity, and with exceptional taste. There are pockets on the schedule for silent movies, for underground films, for film noir, for musicals, and so much more. And if you stay tuned between movies -- which you should -- you get even more treats. Salutes of actors by fellow actors. Short features on costume design and the uncomfortable but illuminating history of blackface in the movies. Some films are presented in newly restored form. Others are newly discovered and presented as the gems they are -- and TCM occasionally revives and showcases rare live television dramas, too. You can imagine how much I love that. Zaslav says the TCM channel is on all the time in his office, too, and he's saying all the right things about valuing the curation of film as well as film itself. But Zaslav already has just shut down his overseas equivalent of Turner Classic Movies in the U.K. And he's the guy who, since taking over the reins at Warner Bros. Discovery, already has turned HBO Max into just Max, which makes no sense -- devaluing his own HBO brand. Zaslav's altered that Max streaming service so that, while a link to a TCM sub-menu does appear, it's buried way down in the menu. What's worse, its highlighted TCM movie offerings are almost all of the more recent, filmed in color, variety. It's presenting only a tepid taste of what TCM offers on its own 24-hour cable service. Zaslav also, since becoming CEO, has overseen the rapid, clumsy devaluation of CNN, by making poorly received moves like that Donald Trump town hall. In Zaslav's short time on the job, he's already considerably damaged CNN, one of Turner's more brilliant network ideas. I fear, with Turner Classic Movies, Zaslav is about to weaken another -- but I'd love to be proven wrong.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from OPB: Out near the far end of Washington's Long Beach Peninsula, 83-year-old Jan Worrell has a new, worldly sidekick in her living room. "This is ElliQ. I call her my roommate," the grandmother said as she introduced her companion robot almost as if it were human. Artificial intelligence is all the rage, and now it's helping some Pacific Northwest seniors live in their own homes for longer. Worrell joined a pilot project that is trialing how AI-driven companion robots could reduce loneliness and social isolation among seniors -- especially those living alone. This "roommate" is a chatty one with a vaguely humanoid head and shoulders. "I talk a lot and I love it. I need someone to interact with and she does," Worrell said. ElliQ is a smart speaker, tablet computer, video phone and artificial intelligence portal all wrapped into one by the maker Intuition Robotics. The stationary table-top device is among the most versatile of a flurry of new tech devices geared to help you or your parents continue to live independently. ElliQ gives Worrell health tips and schedule reminders. It can recite the news and weather. They play memory games. The care bot tells a lot of corny jokes and it can lead an exercise class on command, too. [...] Worrell is among 20 rural seniors living along Washington's Pacific coast selected to receive one of these Israeli-designed robot companions. She gets it for free for a year as part of a pilot project overseen by the Olympic Area Agency on Aging. O3A, as it is known, serves Pacific, Grays Harbor, Jefferson and Clallam counties. [...] On the Long Beach Peninsula, Jan Worrell's son Jeff Whiting watched his mom take to her new robot companion. He said he is impressed by it too, but at the same time is aware there is a creepy side to AI. "They are collecting data on everything that happens in this room," Whiting said in an interview at his mom's house where he is living temporarily. "They know her sleep patterns and they know what time she is up and what time she goes to bed. That would be my only concern." Whiting says the people who came to set up ElliQ gave assurances that users' personal data would be protected. In the case of Whiting's mom, the combo of the companion robot and a medical alert wristwatch changed how long she plans to stay in her own home. Worrell said she felt confident enough last month to cancel her deposit to move into an assisted living facility near her daughter in Eugene, Oregon. Universities and medical schools have generally found that age-tech "decreased loneliness, increased well-being and spurred mental activity and optimism," notes the report. "[T]he 20 Washington seniors selected to receive a free ElliQ companion (a $249 value, plus a monthly subscription of $30-$40) were given a health assessment at the beginning of this pilot project in April. They will be reevaluated in one year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to NBC News, the FBI created a national online database in May to facilitate information sharing between hundreds of police departments and law enforcement agencies across the country pertaining to swatting incidents. From the report: No central agency has tracked swatting incidents or suspects in the U.S., so official statistics are not available. By 2019, there were an estimated 1,000 swatting incidents domestically each year, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, and each incident is estimated to cost at least $10,000 to affected communities, even before expenditures on follow-up work like investigations, property repairs and counseling. Swatting is increasingly enabled by technology that can be used to mask a caller's real voice, their phone number or IP address (also called "spoofing") or to make their false report sound more credible. [Chief Scott Schubert with the bureau's Criminal Justice Information Services headquarters in Clarksburg, West Virginia] told NBC News that the FBI's new centralized database should help the agency "get that common picture of what's going on across our nation so we can learn from that." [...] While the earliest recorded case of swatting occurred in 2002, to this day, there is no specific law criminalizing swatting in the U.S., says John Jay's Shapiro. "Without a statute in place, there's no designated resources or training for investigating swatting incidents," she said. "And the 911 dispatchers do not have the resources and training they need to differentiate between actual emergencies and false reports." Legally, the False Information and Hoaxes statute, also known as section 1038, is most frequently used to prosecute swatting. Other statutes can sometimes apply -- one pertaining to interstate threats involving explosives and another pertaining to interstate communications, which refers to extortion or threats to injure or kidnap somebody. "Too often, perpetrators are getting a slap on the wrist compared to the consequences suffered by their victims," Shapiro said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New data (PDF) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that one-third of Americans worked from home in 2022, up from a quarter, or 25%, in 2019. The survey also found that Americans working full time from home worked 2.5 hours less a day than Americans at the office. Barron's reports: Overall, the total civilian population worked for an average of 3.23 hours a day in 2022 down from 3.26 hours a day in 2019. The U.S. is 1% lazier. That number, given by the BLS, is the total population. Don't forget, babies don't work. [...] As far as what Americans were doing with the time not spent working, TV watching stayed flat, socializing dropped, and gaming increased. "Economics is complicated, but labor productivity is essentially the basis for economic gains," writes Barron's Al Root. "The economy is measured in dollars, but the dollar is just a unit of account. More output per worker is how living standards improve." "In a strange way, coming back to work is like an economic stimulus package. If people go back to the office, at a 2019 rate, and work 8.2 hours a day instead of the at-home 5.7 hours a day, the economy has just added roughly 800 million weeks of work, an 8% bump." "The findings will give management teams some momentum to bring workers back to the office," adds Root.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Required Snark shares a report from Tom's Hardware: A group of Chinese scientists has published (PDF) a paper titled "Pushing the Limits of Machine Design: Automated CPU Design with AI." The paper details the researchers' work in designing a new industrial-scale RISC-V CPU in under 5 hours. It is claimed this AI-automated feat was about 1000x faster than a human team could have finished a comparable CPU design. However, some may poke fun at the resulting AI-designed CPU performing approximately on par with an i486. Training consisted of observing a series of CPU inputs and outputs. The scientists generated a Binary Speculation Diagram (BSD) from this I/O and leveraged principles of Monte Carlo-based expansion and Boolean functions to hone the accuracy and efficiency of the AI-based CPU design. Thus the CPU design was formed "from only external input-output observations instead of formal program code," explains the scientists. It also boasted an impressive 99.99999999999% accuracy. Using the above-outlined process, an automated AI design of a CPU was created. The taped-out RISC-V32IA instruction set CPU was fabricated at 65nm and could run at up to 300 MHz. Running the Linux (kernel 5.15) operating system and SPEC CINT 2000 on the AI-generated CPU validated its functionality. In Drystone benchmarks, the AI-generated CPU performed on par with an i486. Interestingly, it appears to be a little bit faster than an Acorn Archimedes A3010 in the same test.A Though some might be unimpressed by the performance of the AI-generated CPU, the scientists also seem quite proud that their generated BSD "discovered the von Neumann architecture from scratch."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Pokemon GO maker Niantic laid off 230 employees today, just one year after it laid off around 90 employees. During last year's layoffs, Niantic canceled four projects, including a Transformers game. Some Niantic games will meet the same fate this time around. After four months in the App Store, Niantic is shutting down NBA All-World; the company will also cancel production on a game based on the Marvel franchise. "In the wake of the revenue surge we saw during Covid, we grew our headcount and related expenses in order to pursue growth more aggressively," CEO John Hanke wrote in an email to employees, cross-posted to the company blog. This has been a common refrain among the hundreds of tech companies that have conducted layoffs over the last year -- companies claimed they overhired during the pandemic and now need to right-size their teams. In Niantic's case, Hanke said that revenue has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and new projects have not delivered as much revenue as they would have hoped. One such new project is Peridot, a Tamagotchi-like mobile game. Niantic's first attempt at original IP since Ingress, Peridot launched in May. But according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Peridot has only made $1.4 million in gross in-app purchase revenue thus far. [...] Pokemon GO is Niantic's cash cow, pulling in more than $1 billion in in-app purchases each year since 2020. But players have also been feeling slighted by Niantic's in-app purchase system. [...] Though games like Peridot have not yet proved financially sustainable, Niantic has an entire business arm separate from its own games. Niantic's Lightship AR developer kit makes it possible for any developer who knows how to use Unity to make AR games. Developers also have access to Niantic's impressive visual positioning system (VPS), which lets users interact with local landmarks in their real-world surroundings. Hanke even mentioned in his note to employees that the company wants to ramp up its focus on building for mixed-reality devices and AR glasses. So, if Niantic can't seem to make a successful follow-up to Pokemon GO, maybe its developer tools can keep the company on the right track.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two U.S. authors have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the company infringed their copyrights by using their works without permission to train its generative AI system, ChatGPT. The plaintiffs, Massachusetts-based writers Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad, claim the data used to train ChatGPT included thousands of books, including those from illegal "shadow libraries." Reuters reports: The complaint estimated that OpenAI's training data incorporated over 300,000 books, including from illegal "shadow libraries" that offer copyrighted books without permission. Awad is known for novels including "13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl" and "Bunny." Tremblay's novels include "The Cabin at the End of the World," which was adapted in the M. Night Shyamalan film "Knock at the Cabin" released in February. Tremblay and Awad said ChatGPT could generate "very accurate" summaries of their books, indicating that they appeared in its database. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of money damages on behalf of a nationwide class of copyright owners whose works OpenAI allegedly misused.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VMware has joined AMD, Samsung, and members of the RISC-V community to work on an open and cross-platform framework for the development and operation of applications using confidential computing hardware. The Register reports: Revealing the effort at the Confidential Computing Summit 2023 in San Francisco, the companies say they aim to bring about an industry transition to practical confidential computing by developing the open source Certifier Framework for Confidential Computing project. Among other goals, the project aims to standardize on a set of platform-independent developer APIs that can be used to develop or adapt application code to run in a confidential computing environment, with a Certifier Service overseeing them in operation. VMware claims to have researched, developed and open sourced the Certifier Framework, but with AMD on board, plus Samsung (which develops its own smartphone chips), the group has the x86 and Arm worlds covered. Also on board is the Keystone project, which is developing an enclave framework to support confidential computing on RISC-V processors. Confidential computing is designed to protect applications and their data from theft or tampering by protecting them inside a secure enclave, or trusted execution environment (TEE). This uses hardware-based security mechanisms to prevent access from everything outside the enclave, including the host operating system and any other application code. Such security protections are likely to be increasingly important in the context of applications running in multi-cloud environments, VMware reckons. Another scenario for confidential computing put forward by Microsoft, which believes confidential computing will become the norm -- is multi-party computation and analytics. This sees several users each contribute their own private data to an enclave, where it can be analyzed securely to produce results much richer than each would have got purely from their own data set. This is described as an emerging class of machine learning and "data economy" workloads that are based on sensitive data and models aggregated from multiple sources, which will be enabled by confidential computing. However, VMware points out that like many useful hardware features, it will not be widely adopted until it becomes easier to develop applications in the new paradigm.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Two U.S. schools have confirmed that TIAA, a nonprofit organization that provides financial services for individuals in academic fields, has been caught up in the mass-hacks targeting MOVEit file transfer tools. Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College in Connecticut both released security notices confirming they experienced data breaches as a result of a security incident at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, or TIAA. According to its website, TIAA serves mire than five million active and retired employees participating at more than 15,000 institutions and manages $1.3 trillion in assets in more than 50 countries. Both of the security notices confirm that TIAA was affected by hackers' widespread exploitation of a flaw in MOVEit Transfer, an enterprise file transfer tool developed by Progress Software. The mass-hack has so far claimed more than 160 victims, according to Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Siemens Energy. Only 12 of these victims have confirmed the number of people affected, which already adds up to more than 16 million individuals. While TIAA notified affected schools of its security incident, the organization has yet to publicly acknowledge the incident. In response to a Twitter user questioning the organization's silence, TIAA responded saying that its offices were closed. It's not yet known how many organizations have been impacted as a result of the cyberattack on TIAA. TIAA has not yet been listed on the dark web leak site of the Russia-linked Clop ransomware gang, which has claimed responsibility for the ongoing MOVEit cyberattacks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Data privacy laws in Colorado and Connecticut will go into effect Saturday. From a report: If companies haven't finished their compliance work to abide by the rules, they could face civil penalties of up to $20,000 per violation in some states. Colorado and Connecticut add to an increasingly complex patchwork of state data privacy laws. California paved the way in 2018 after passing the country's first state-level privacy bill, while Virginia followed this year. The Colorado and Connecticut laws apply to entities that do business in those states, as well as businesses that process a certain amount of data about in-state customers. Under the new laws, residents of each state will have the right to request businesses delete their personal information, ask for a copy of the information businesses have collected about them, opt out of the sale of their personal data, and more. Both laws also require businesses to request opt-in permission from consumers before letting businesses process their sensitive information -- differing from the opt-out mechanism consumers have in CaliforniaRead more of this story at Slashdot.

The FTC has proposed a new rule banning numerous forms of fake reviews online, from outright fabricated ones to those that are sketchily repurposed or secretly manipulated. It may not totally rehabilitate the notoriously unreliable online review ecosystem, but it could help make things a bit more bearable. From a report: This rule has been a long time in the making, which is par for the course at any federal regulator. The FTC's first case of this type was in 2019, against a merchant that was making misleading claims and paying for fake reviews. Before that, it had taken on "influencer marketing" where a person didn't disclose that they were being paid to promote a product. Now the agency is ready to take comprehensive action with rules they first previewed last October and have now put in near-final form. The proposed rule is the result of much research and of consultation with businesses, consumers, and even advertising trade organizations that predictably advised the FTC not to bother cracking down on this lucrative business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chipmaker TSMC said on Friday that one of its hardware suppliers experienced a "security incident" that allowed the attackers to obtain configurations and settings for some of the servers the company uses in its corporate network. From a report: The disclosure came a day after the LockBit ransomware crime syndicate listed TSMC on its extortion site and threatened to publish the data unless it received a payment of $70 million. The hardware supplier, Kinmax Technology, confirmed that one of its test environments had been attacked by an external group, which was then able to retrieve configuration files and other parameter information. The company said it learned of the breach on Thursday and immediately shut down the compromised systems and notified the affected customer. "Since the above information has nothing to do with the actual application of the customer, it is only the basic setting at the time of shipment," Kinmax officials wrote. "At present, no damage has been caused to the customer, and the customer has not been hacked by it." In an email, a TSMC representative wrote, "Upon review, this incident has not affected TSMC's business operations, nor did it compromise any TSMC's customer information. After the incident, TSMC has immediately terminated its data exchange with this supplier in accordance with the Company's security protocols and standard operating procedures." The statement didn't say if TSMC has been contacted by the attackers or if it plans to pay the ransom.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A top adviser to Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health admitted that he used a personal email account in an apparent effort to evade the strictures of the Freedom of Information Act, according to records obtained by congressional investigators probing the origin of Covid-19. The official also expressed his intention to delete emails in order to avoid media scrutiny. The Intercept: "As you know, I try to always communicate on gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'd constantly," wrote David M. Morens, a high-ranking NIH official, in a September 2021 email, one of a series of email exchanges that included many leading scientists involved in the bitter Covid origins debate. "Stuff sent to my gmail gets to my phone," he added, "but not my NIH computer." After noting that his Gmail account had been hacked, however, he wrote to the group to say that he might have to use his NIH email account to communicate with them instead. "Don't worry," he wrote, "just send to any of my addresses, and I will delete anything I don't want to see in the New York Times."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: In The Man Who Broke Bowling, GQ's Eric Wills profiles professional bowler Jason Belmonte, whose two-handed bowling technique made him both an outcast as well as one of bowling's greatest, changing the sport forever. Unlike the rest of us, a 7-year-old Belmonte was unconvinced by the taunts used to prompt kids into switching from bowling two-handed to one-handed ("It was, Come on, you're a big boy now. It's time to bowl properly," Belmonte recalls). As a result, Belmonte was able to develop a 600-rpm throw when most pro bowlers averaged 350-400, imparting a spin that "sends the pins into concussion protocol." Wills writes: "When he first alighted on the professional bowling scene, Belmonte resembled an alien species: one that bowled with two hands. And not some granny shot, to be clear, but a kickass power move in which he uses two fingers (and no thumb) on his right hand, palms the front of the ball with his left, and then, on his approach, which is marked by a distinctive shuffle step, rocks the ball back before launching it with a liquid, athletic whip, his delivery producing an eye-popping hook, his ball striking the pins like a mini mortar explosion. Not everyone welcomed his arrival. He's been called a cheat, told to go back to his native Australia; a PBA Hall of Famer once called the two-hander a 'cancer to an already diseased sport.' If you're interested in more on the technical aspects of bowling -- Belmonte's installed a tracking system in his parent's bowling center back in Australia that generates reams of data he can sift through to find areas for improvement -- Wikipedia goes into some of the physics of bowling balls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some of the biggest companies in Europe have taken collective action to criticize the European Union's recently approved artificial intelligence regulations, claiming that the Artificial Intelligence Act is ineffective and could negatively impact competition. From a report: In an open letter sent to the European Parliament, Commission, and member states on Friday, over 150 executives from companies like Renault, Heineken, Airbus, and Siemens slammed the AI Act for its potential to "jeopardise Europe's competitiveness and technological sovereignty." On June 14th, the European Parliament greenlit a draft of the AI Act following two years of developing its rules, and expanding them to encompass recent AI breakthroughs like large language AI models (LLMs) and foundation models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4. There are still several phases remaining before the new law can take effect, with the remaining inter-institutional negotiations expected to end later this year. The signatories of the open letter claim that the AI Act in its current state may suppress the opportunity AI technology provides for Europe to "rejoin the technological avant-garde." They argue that the approved rules are too extreme, and risk undermining the bloc's technological ambitions instead of providing a suitable environment for AI innovation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huawei has claimed it will offer everything a carrier needs to run a 5.5G network next year. Which sounds great -- even if 5.5G is a little mysterious. From a report: Huawei announced its future products at the Shanghai incarnation of Mobile World Congress on Thursday. The Chinese firm's director and president of ICT Products & Solutions, Yang Chaobin, proclaimed Huawei intends for its launch "to mark the beginning of the 5.5G era for the ICT industry." But as The Register has previously reported, 5.5G is a contested label. The 3GPP, which oversees development of 5G and other standards, is yet to formally declare 5.5G is a thing. It is, however, continuing to evolve 5G and is currently steering work on Release 18 -- which it has styled "5G-Advanced." It includes some significant changes, such as the ability to offer 10Gbit/sec connections -- if carriers can use 800MHz of spectrum. Release 18 will also require mmWave frequencies. Huawei appears to be referring to Release 18 as 5.5G, for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Yang sprinkled a little hype dust on his announcement -- claiming that Huawei has "been working on applying AI-native technologies to 5.5G core networks to continuously enhance network capabilities and availability." Doing so will apparently "allow AI capabilities to be delivered to the very ends of networks." Righto. Just keep saying "AI" a lot and people will love it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Online piracy, now being linked with malware, identity theft, and banking fraud, has prompted a coordinated concerning campaign for tougher legislation beyond copyright laws. The French government, news website TorrentFreak reports, is considering an ambitious approach: integrating state-operated domain blacklists into web browsers. This step is well-intentioned, indicating an evolving strategy in battling piracy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RSS Advisory Board: This month marks the 20th anniversary of the effort that became the Atom feed format. It all began on June 16, 2003, with a blog post from Apache Software Foundation contributor Sam Ruby asking for feedback about what constitutes a well-formed blog entry. The development of RSS 2.0 had been an unplanned hopscotch from a small group at Netscape to a smaller one at UserLand Software, but Atom was a barn raising. Hundreds of software developers, web publishers and technologists gathered for a discussion in the abstract that led to a concrete effort to build a well-specified syndication format and associated publishing API that could become Internet standards. Work was done on a project wiki that grew to over 1,500 pages. Everything was up for a vote, including a plebiscite on choosing a name that ballooned into a four-month-long bikeshed discussion in which Pie, Echo, Wingnut, Feedcast, Phaistos and several dozen alternatives finally, mercifully, miraculously lost out to Atom. The road map of the Atom wiki lists the people, companies and projects that jumped at the chance to create a new format for feeds. XML specification co-author Tim Bray wrote: "The time to write it all down and standardize it is not when you're first struggling to invent the technology. We now have aggregators and publishing systems and search engines and you-name-it, and I think the community collectively understands pretty well what you need, what you don't need, and what a good syntax looks like. So, now's the time."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China is shoring up its position as the world leader in renewable power and potentially outpacing its own ambitious energy targets, a report has found. The Guardian: China is set to double its capacity and produce 1,200 gigawatts of energy through wind and solar power by 2025, reaching its 2030 goal five years ahead of time, according to the report by Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based NGO that tracks operating utility-scale wind and solar farms as well as future projects in the country. It says that as of the first quarter of the year, China's utility-scale solar capacity has reached 228GW, more than that of the rest of the world combined. The installations are concentrated in the country's north and north-west provinces, such as Shanxi, Xinjiang and Hebei. In addition, the group identified solar farms under construction that could add another 379GW in prospective capacity, triple that of the US and nearly double that of Europe. China has also made huge strides in wind capacity: its combined onshore and offshore capacity now surpasses 310GW, double its 2017 level and roughly equivalent to the next top seven countries combined. With new projects in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu and along coastal areas, China is on course to add another 371GW before 2025, increasing the global wind fleet by nearly half.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK made last-minute amendments toughening up its sweeping, long-awaited Online Safety Bill following scrutiny in Parliament's upper chamber, the House of Lords. From a report: Internet companies carrying pornographic content will be explicitly required to use age verification or estimation measures, and ensure these methods are effective, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said in an emailed statement Friday. Executives will be held personally responsible for child safety on their platforms, the statement said. DSIT didn't respond to follow-up questions about the detail of this policy. Regulator Ofcom will be empowered to retrieve data on the online activity of deceased children to understand if and how their online activity may have played any role in their death, if requested by a coroner, the government said. It also announced Ofcom will research the role that app stores play in children's access to harmful content. The watchdog will also publish guidance on how platforms can reduce risks to women and have to improve public literacy of disinformation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For years Microsoft has kept a lid on details about the true size of its Azure cloud server rental business, making it impossible for investors to know how Microsoft's cloud operations unit stacked up against industry leader Amazon Web Services. But this week, thanks to antitrust regulators, the world got a peek under the lid. The Information: Azure generated half the revenue of its primary rival, Amazon Web Services, in the 12 months ended June 2022, according to internal documents briefly posted by federal antitrust regulators on a court website this week. That means Azure's share of the market was several percentage points smaller than some analyst firms had estimated. That could change investor perceptions of Microsoft's success in cloud, suggesting it hasn't done as well as widely believed. The document posted online showed that in June of last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the company's board of directors that the cloud server business within Azure would generate $34 billion in revenue in the 12 months ending June that year. That number is directly comparable to the $72 billion that AWS reported in the same period, unlike the cloud revenue number that Microsoft typically reports, which includes subscription software.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Social media firms will be ordered to protect children from encountering dangerous stunts and challenges on their platforms under changes to the online safety bill. The legislation will explicitly refer to content that "encourages, promotes or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt highly likely to result in serious injury" as the type of material that under-18s should be protected from. The bill will also require social media companies to proactively prevent children from seeing the highest risk forms of content, such as material encouraging suicide and self-harm. Tech firms could be required to use age-checking measures to prevent under-18s from seeing such material. In another change to the legislation, which is expected to become law this year, social media platforms will have to introduce tougher age-checking measures to prevent children from accessing pornography -- bringing them in line with the bill's measures for mainstream sites such as Pornhub. Services that publish or allow pornography on their sites will be required to introduce "highly effective" age-checking measures such as age estimation tools that estimate someone's age from a selfie. Other amendments include requiring the communications watchdog Ofcom to produce guidance for tech firms on protecting women and girls online. Ofcom, which will oversee implementation of the act once it comes into force, will be required to consult with the domestic abuse commissioner and victims commissioner when producing the guidance, in order to ensure it reflects the voices of victims. The updated bill will also criminalize the sharing of deepfake intimate images in England and Wales. In a further change it will require platforms to ask adult users if they wish to avoid content that promotes self-harm or eating disorders or racist content. Once the law comes into force breaches will carry a punishment of a fine of 18m or up to 10% of global turnover. In the most extreme cases, Ofcom will be able to block platforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a landmark ruling (PDF) on Thursday, the New Jersey Supreme Court sided with Facebook in a major court decision that requires prosecutors to get a wiretap order if they want to eavesdrop on social media accounts without adequate evidence of a crime. New Jersey Monitor reports: In a reversal of lower court decisions, the high court ruled against authorities who argued a warrant is sufficient to obtain nearly real-time release of such communications. That argument is unsupported by federal or state statute, the court said, adding that allowing such releases would effectively neuter New Jersey's wiretap law. In separate cases focused on two men under investigation for drug offenses, authorities obtained a communications data warrant to force Facebook to disclose social media postings -- within 15 minutes of their creation -- made by the pair over a 30-day span. The state contended such releases, which Facebook said were as close to real-time as technology allows, could be made without meeting the higher bar for a wiretap order because by the time Facebook provided them, they would already have been transmitted and electronically stored. But Thursday's decision says allowing such releases would make the state's wiretap statute obsolete because "law enforcement today would never need to apply for a wiretap order to obtain future electronic communications from Facebook users' accounts on an ongoing basis." Authorities must show probable cause to obtain a warrant. To obtain a wiretap order, they must also demonstrate that other investigatory methods would fail -- because they are too dangerous, for example -- according to criminal defense lawyer Brian Neary. Neary argued on behalf of the New Jersey State Bar Association, which joined the case as a friend of the court. "It's great to see the New Jersey Supreme Court make clear that whenever the government seeks ongoing access to our private conversations, it must meet the heightened protections required under state law and the federal and state constitutions," said Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to new findings published in the journal Science, astronomers have detected high-energy neutrinos (also known as "ghost particles") coming from within our Milky Way galaxy. Space.com reports: High-energy neutrinos are known to originate from galaxies beyond the Milky Way. But researchers have long suspected that our own galaxy is a source as well. For example, when cosmic rays -- atomic nuclei moving at nearly the speed of light -- strike dust and gas, they generate both gamma rays and high-energy neutrinos. Previous research has detected gamma rays from the Milky Way's plane, so scientists have expected high-energy neutrinos from there as well. There have been hints of such emission, but confirmation has proven elusive to date. The new study took another look, using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. IceCube is embedded within a gigaton (1 billion tons) of ice, making it the first gigaton neutrino detector ever built. IceCube encompasses 0.24 cubic miles (1 cubic kilometer) of Antarctic ice holding more than 5,000 light sensors. These devices watch for the unique flashes of light that result from the rare instances in which neutrinos do smash into atoms. The research team focused on the plane of the Milky Way, the dense region of the galaxy that lies along the Milky Way's equator. They studied 10 years of IceCube data, analyzing 60,000 neutrinos -- 30 times more than prior neutrino scans of the galactic plane had looked at. [...] This work identified high-energy neutrinos that likely came from the Milky Way's galactic plane. "This observation of high-energy neutrinos opens up an entirely new window to study the properties of our host galaxy," study co-author Mirco Huennefeld, an astroparticle physicist at TU Dortmund University in Germany, told Space.com. "I think it's exciting to see the young field of neutrino astronomy develop with such an increasing pace," Huennefeld added. "It took decades to envision a neutrino telescope such as IceCube, and just in the last few years, we saw an accumulation of exciting observations, including the first evidence of extragalactic sources. Now, with these results, we have achieved a new milestone in neutrino astronomy." Although the findings suggest that the newfound neutrinos come from our galaxy, IceCube currently is not sensitive enough to pinpoint their sources. They may emerge in a diffuse manner, or a significant number of them might come from specific points in the sky, Huennefeld said. In the coming years, IceCube will get detector upgrades "that will further enhance its sensitivity, allowing us to obtain a clearer picture of the Milky Way in neutrinos in the near future," Huennefeld said. "Answering these questions will have implications on our understanding of cosmic rays and their origin, and also in general on the inferred properties of our host galaxy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Something fishy is happening in the Netherlands and viewers worldwide are hooked. No, this isn't the latest voyeuristic reality series from the creators of Big Brother and The Traitors. It's a charmingly innocent live stream which lets you ring a doorbell on behalf of some frisky fish. For the past three migration seasons, an online feed has broadcast live footage from an underwater camera at a lock to the west of Utrecht. Every spring, thousands of fish swish through the Netherlands' fourth-largest city, seeking shallow waters in which to lay their eggs. Some swim all the way to Germany, like piscine Adam Peatys. Slight snag: they often have to wait at the Weerdsluis lock, which seldom opens at this time of year. Local ecologists came up with an ingenious solution: the world's first fish doorbell or visdeurbel in Dutch (try saying it out loud). If webcam watchers spot fish waiting to pass, they simply press a virtual doorbell and the lock keeper -- who can't see down into the water, which is 2.1 metres (7ft) deep, from dry land -- is sent a notification. When enough fish have gathered, the operator opens the 200-year-old sluice gate by hand to let them through. It enables professionals and the public to work together around the clock, ensuring fish don't have to wait too long. Like a marine midwife or damp doula, you can help them reach their spawning sites unscathed. It means they're less likely to fall victim to predators such as herons, cormorants and grebes (boo! baddies!). The project is a collaboration between water authorities and the municipality of Utrecht as fish are a vital part of the ecosystem, eating insects and maintaining the cleanliness of canals. It also provides data about the plentiful wildlife beneath the serene surface of the city's waterways. No wonder visitors are logging on to lend a hand, waving through 2,000 fish a week. Politely holding a door open for our scaly pals -- who lack the opposable fins to do it themselves -- is a feelgood act of kindness. The green-tinged live feed is like a calming version of that giant puddle in Newcastle or an eco equivalent of Big Jet TV. It's wholesome, interactive and addictive, akin to a soggy Springwatch or a low-budget Blue Planet. "In spring 2021, the doorbell was rung more than 100,000 times by punters as far afield as Canada and Taiwan," notes the report. "Thanks to its growing fanbase, this has been its best year yet, hitting one million unique users and 8.2 million visits in total."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Alaska Weather," a daily 30-minute TV show that has broadcast across Alaska for the past 47 years, is going off the air due to a lack of funds. Gizmodo reports: In lieu of the news, residents seeking information on their state's weather will be forced to lean on spotty, sub-par internet. Friday evening will be the final television installment of "Alaska Weather," as first reported by Alaska Public Media. The show, which is the only weather program produced directly by the National Weather Service, has filled an information and communications void for decades. Without it, "if you don't have good internet connectivity, you're in a world of hurt in western and northern Alaska as far as getting weather information," said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center, to the Associated Press. And many in Alaska don't have reliable or fast internet access. General, aviation, and maritime forecast segments will remain available online only, via YouTube. Emergency alerts, like storm warnings, will be relegated to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration radio broadcasts, which don't cover the whole state, per Alaska Public Media. Officials from the state-owned, non-profit media organization say that money problems are to blame. Putting together and distributing "Alaska Weather" has cost Alaska Public Media $200,000 annually, and the network can't afford to do it anymore, according to Linda Wei, APM's chief content officer. "It's no longer sustainable for us to continue in this manner," Wei told AP. "It's not a decision that we came to lightly." Big state funding cuts in 2019 left APM in a tough spot. The media org kept "Alaska Weather" going on its own for years, following the loss of state backing, but now Wei says the network can't anymore. "We've been doing this, without support, for about four or five years, and we've made that known to NOAA," said Wei to WaPo. "It just got to the point where we couldn't continue." Wei says she's hoping there's a possibility of getting "Alaska Weather" back on the air. But for now, there will be a gap.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta is planning to allow users in the EU to directly download apps through Facebook ads, aiming to compete with Google and Apple's app stores. The Verge's Alex Heath writes: The new type of ad is set to start as a pilot with a handful of Android app developers as soon as later this year, I've learned. Meta sees an opening to try this thanks to new regulation in the EU called the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that is expected to go into effect next spring. It deems Apple and Google as "gatekeepers" and requires that they open up their mobile platforms to alternative methods of downloading apps. Android technically allows sideloading already, though Google makes it difficult by coupling its in-app billing and licensing with the Play Store, along with the scary warnings it shows when someone tries to download an Android app from another source. Even still, Meta clearly thinks it's safer to try its test first on Android rather than Apple's iOS. Meta's pitch to developers participating in the pilot is that, by hosting their Android apps and letting Facebook users download them directly without being kicked out to the Play Store, they'll see higher conversion rates for their app install ads. At least initially, Meta doesn't plan to take a cut of in-app revenue from participating apps, so developers in the pilot could still use whatever billing systems they want.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Brave browser will take action against websites that snoop on visitors by scanning their open Internet ports or accessing other network resources that can expose personal information. Starting in version 1.54, Brave will automatically block website port scanning, a practice that a surprisingly large number of sites were found engaging in a few years ago. According to this list compiled in 2021 by a researcher who goes by the handle G666g1e, 744 websites scanned visitors' ports, most or all without providing notice or seeking permission in advance. eBay, Chick-fil-A, Best Buy, Kroger, and Macy's were among the offending websites. Some sites use similar tactics in an attempt to fingerprint visitors so they can be re-identified each time they return, even if they delete browser cookies. By running scripts that access local resources on the visiting devices, the sites can detect unique patterns in a visiting browser. Sometimes there are benign reasons a site will access local resources, such as detecting insecurities or allowing developers to test their websites. Often, however, there are more abusive or malicious motives involved. The new version of Brave will curb the practice. By default, no website will be able to access local resources. More advanced users who want a particular site to have such access can add it to an allow list. The interface will look something like the screenshot displayed [here]. Brave will continue to use filter list rules to block scripts and sites known to abuse localhost resources. Additionally, the browser will include an allow list that gives the green light to sites known to access localhost resources for user-benefiting reasons. "Brave has chosen to implement the localhost permission in this multistep way for several reasons," developers of the browser wrote. "Most importantly, we expect that abuse of localhost resources is far more common than user-benefiting cases, and we want to avoid presenting users with permission dialogs for requests we expect will only cause harm." "As far as we can tell, Brave is the only browser that will block requests to localhost resources from both secure and insecure public sites, while still maintaining a compatibility path for sites that users trust (in the form of the discussed localhost permission)" the Brave post said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is pulling the plug on its "Project Iris" augmented-reality glasses, according to Insider. The Verge reports: According to the publication, Google is now focused on software instead of hardware. It's building a "micro XR" platform it could license to other headset manufacturers, much like how Google provides Android to a broad ecosystem of phones. However, Insider suggests the ski goggle-like headset we originally mentioned may actually still be in the cards -- as Google is no longer creating them all by itself. In February, Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm made an incredibly vague announcement about how the three companies were partnering together on a new mixed reality platform, and while we've heard nothing meaningful about it since, Insider's sources say that Google's goggles "were actually the foundations" of the upcoming Samsung headset. Insider reports that that Project Iris was plagued by layoffs and shifting strategies during development, and Google's head of VR/AR Clay Bavor notably left the company four months ago. Kurt Akeley, a distinguished engineer who we reported was attached to the project, is now listed as "retired" on his LinkedIn page. Two others are still listed as being involved with AR, including Mark Lucovsky, the company's senior director of operating systems for AR.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google said Thursday it will remove Canadian news content from its search, news and discover products after a new law meant to compensate media outlets comes into force. CBC.ca reports: "We're disappointed it has come to this. We don't take this decision or its impacts lightly and believe it's important to be transparent with Canadian publishers and our users as early as possible," said Kent Walker, the president of global affairs at Google and Alphabet. "The unprecedented decision to put a price on links (a so-called 'link tax') creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians' access to news from Canadian publishers." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government was confident Google would come around on the legislation. "I will say the conversations with Google are ongoing. It is important that we find a way to ensure that Canadians can continue to access content in all sorts of ways but also that we protect rigorous independent journalism that has a foundational role in our democracies," he said. "We know that democracies only work with a strong independent diverse media and we will continue to work for that." The bill has been pitched as a way to keep news outlets solvent after advertising moved en masse to digital platforms, virtually wiping out a major revenue stream for journalism. [...] In an attempt to reverse the revenue decline, the government's new regulatory regime will require companies like Google and the Meta-owned Facebook -- and other major online platforms that reproduce or facilitate access to news content -- to either pay to post content or go through a binding arbitration process led by an arms-length regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). An outlet will be considered an eligible news business if it regularly employs two or more journalists in Canada, operates largely within Canada and produces content that is edited and designed in this country. Google and Meta have signaled they'd rather get out of the news-posting business altogether rather than deal with this process. Meta also announced last week that would be removing all news content from Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada. You can read more about the Online News Act here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to file a major antitrust lawsuit accusing Amazon of "leverag[ing] its power to reward online merchants that use its logistics services and punish those who don't," Bloomberg reported today. Bloomberg described the forthcoming lawsuit as "the big one," following several earlier lawsuits filed by the FTC under Chair Lina Khan. "In the coming weeks, the agency plans to file a far-reaching antitrust suit focused on Amazon's core online marketplace, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and three people familiar with the case," the report said. Khan may try to force Amazon to "restructure" its business. "Based on her public comments, Khan is unlikely to accept compromises from Amazon and could seek to restructure the company -- a dramatic outcome that Amazon would surely appeal," Bloomberg wrote. [...] Third-party sellers can rely on Amazon for warehousing, shipping, and other services through the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) system, but it takes a big cut out of their revenue. A recent Marketplace Pulse study based on profit and loss statements from a sample of sellers found that "Amazon is pocketing more than 50 percent of sellers' revenue -- up from 40 percent five years ago," because "Amazon has increased fulfillment fees and made spending on advertising unavoidable." "According to P&Ls provided by a sample of sellers, a typical Amazon seller pays a 15 percent transaction fee (Amazon calls it a referral fee), 20-35 percent in Fulfillment by Amazon fees (including storage and other fees), and up to 15 percent for advertising and promotions on Amazon. The total fees vary depending on the category, product price, size, weight, and the seller's business model," Marketplace Pulse wrote in February. According to Bloomberg's article, the "FTC has amassed evidence that the company disadvantages sellers that don't use these services, and the agency is investigating an algorithm that selects merchants for the web store's coveted 'Buy Box,' where consumers can add products to their cart with one click." "The expected allegations are similar to a 2020 report from a US House subcommittee -- which counted Khan as a staff member -- and overlap with a European antitrust case that charged Amazon with rewarding sellers that use its fulfillment services and using merchants' sales data to boost its own retail business," Bloomberg wrote. Amazon agreed to a settlement with the EU in December 2022. The FTC's current investigation began two years before Khan became chair. "Amazon received the initial investigation notice in June 2019, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg. The first request for records followed two months later," the Bloomberg article said. Upon taking charge in 2021, Khan "personally helped draft some lines of questioning for investigators" and took other actions to beef up the probe into Amazon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some YouTube users with ad blockers are seeing a new three-strikes popup menu while watching videos. "The popup menu in the screenshot suggests users will be barred from YouTube viewing after watching three videos with an ad blocker enabled," reports Android Authority. From the report: "It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Video playback will be blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled," reads an excerpt of the screenshot. The service presents users with two buttons, prompting them to either allow ads in their ad blocker or letting them buy YouTube Premium. YouTube confirmed to The Verge that it's currently running "a small experiment globally that urges viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Valve has reportedly started banning Steam games featuring AI-created art assets, unless developers can prove they have rights to the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create them. From a report: In a Reddit post spotted by games industry veteran Simon Carless, a developer recounted submitting an early version of a game to Steam with a few "fairly obviously AI generated" assets which they said they planned to improve by hand in a later build. In response, they were told the game could not be approved unless the developer could prove to Valve that they owned all the necessary rights. "After reviewing, we have identified intellectual property in [Game Name Here] which appears to belongs to one or more third parties," Valve said. "In particular, [Game Name Here] contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties. As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets, unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game." Valve said it was failing the build and would give the developer a single opportunity to remove all content they didn't own the rights to before resubmitting it. The developer said they then improved the assets in question by hand "so there were no longer any obvious signs of AI," but after resubmitting the game it was again rejected. "We cannot ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights," Valve said. "At this time, we are declining to distribute your game since it's unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The website Goodreads has become an essential avenue for building readership, but the same features that help generate excitement can also backfire. The New York Times: Cecilia Rabess figured her debut novel, "Everything's Fine," would spark criticism: The story centers on a young Black woman working at Goldman Sachs who falls in love with a conservative white co-worker with bigoted views. But she didn't expect a backlash to strike six months before the book was published. In January, after a Goodreads user who had received an advanced copy posted a plot summary that went viral on Twitter, the review site was flooded with negative comments and one-star reviews, with many calling the book anti-Black and racist. Some of the comments were left by users who said they had never read the book, but objected to its premise. "It may look like a bunch of one-star reviews on Goodreads, but these are broader campaigns of harassment," Rabess said. "People were very keen not just to attack the work, but to attack me as well." In an era when reaching readers online has become a near-existential problem for publishers, Goodreads has become an essential avenue for building an audience. As a cross between a social media platform and a review site like Yelp, the site has been a boon for publishers hoping to generate excitement for books. But the same features that get users talking about books and authors can also backfire. Reviews can be weaponized, in some cases derailing a book's publication long before its release. "It can be incredibly hurtful, and it's frustrating that people are allowed to review books this way if they haven't read them," said Roxane Gay, an author and editor who also posts reviews on Goodreads. "Worse, they're allowed to review books that haven't even been written. I have books on there being reviewed that I'm not finished with yet."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that 57 firms have been certified to utilize its "FedNow" instant payments system after it launches in late July. From a report: The Fed did not provide a specific date for the launch, but 41 banks and 15 service providers, including large firms like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo, have completed formal testing and will be ready to provide instant payments after the new service is live.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now. But the quest continues. From a report: A 25-year science wager has come to an end. In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain's neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is an ongoing quest -- and declared Chalmers the winner. What ultimately helped to settle the bet was a study testing two leading hypotheses about the neural basis of consciousness, whose findings were unveiled at the conference. "It was always a relatively good bet for me and a bold bet for Christof," says Chalmers, who is now co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. But he also says this isn't the end of the story, and that an answer will come eventually: "There's been a lot of progress in the field." Consciousness is everything that a person experiences -- what they taste, hear, feel and more. It is what gives meaning and value to our lives, Chalmers says. Despite a vast effort, researchers still don't understand how our brains produce it, however. "It started off as a very big philosophical mystery," Chalmers adds. "But over the years, it's gradually been transmuting into, if not a 'scientific' mystery, at least one that we can get a partial grip on scientifically." [...] The goal was to set up a series of 'adversarial' experiments to test various hypotheses of consciousness by getting rival researchers to collaborate on the studies' design. "If their predictions didn't come true, this would be a serious challenge for their theories," Chalmers says. The findings from one of the experiments -- which involved several researchers, including Koch and Chalmers -- were revealed on Friday at the ASSC meeting. It tested two of the leading hypotheses: integrated information theory (IIT) and global network workspace theory (GNWT). IIT proposes that consciousness is a 'structure' in the brain formed by a specific type of neuronal connectivity that is active for as long as a certain experience, such as looking at an image, is occurring. This structure is thought to be found in the posterior cortex, at the back of the brain. GNWT, by contrast, suggests that consciousness arises when information is broadcast to areas of the brain through an interconnected network. The transmission, according to the theory, happens at the beginning and end of an experience and involves the prefrontal cortex, at the front of the brain.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last month, Microsoft announced that it would continue its put-ChatGPT-in-everything adventure with a new Windows 11 feature called Copilot. The company added generative AI to Edge and to the Bing-powered taskbar Search field months ago, but Copilot promises to be the most visible and hard-to-ignore version of Microsoft's big AI push in its most visible and hard-to-ignore product. This week's Windows Insider Preview build for Dev channel users, build 23493, will be the first to enable Copilot for public testers. After installing the update, preview users can press Windows + C to open a Copilot column on the right side of the screen. It will use the same Microsoft account you use for the rest of the OS (it's unclear whether it will work without a Microsoft account, though, to date, the preview has required sign-up and sign-in). And like the other Bing Chat implementations, it has three different "conversation style" settings that either try to rein the chatbot in and keep its answers straightforward and factual or allow it to get "more creative" but more prone to confabulations. In addition to chatting, Copilot will also support creating AI images using OpenAI's DALL-E 2 model, the same technology used for the Bing Image Creator. Some features announced last month, including third-party plugin support, aren't included in this initial preview, and later versions will also be able to adjust a wider range of Windows settings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI software and voice cloners simulate distracted saps willing to stay on the phone forever -- or until callers finally give up. From a report: Complaints about unwanted telephone calls are "far-and-away the largest category of consumer complaints to the FCC," with the average American receiving 14 unwanted calls a month, according to one industry estimate, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission said. Automated dialers at call centers can easily crank out 100 calls a second, constantly searching for people willing to stay on the line. Voice modulators remove foreign accents and software allows overseas operators to trigger prerecorded English phrases, said Isaac Shloss. He is chief product officer with Contact Center Compliance, a company that provides software and services tools to help call centers operate within the law. Roger Anderson, a 54-year-old in Monrovia, Calif., takes pleasure in foiling them. He began his war on telemarketers nearly a decade ago, he said, after one called the family's landline and said a bad word to his son. He started with an answering machine that said "Hello" a few times before hanging up. Anderson has since rolled out his weapons of mass distraction. He has posted conversations between man and bot, some lasting as long as 15 minutes before the telemarketer hangs up. The posts are part of Anderson's own marketing. He has several thousand customers paying $24.99 a year for use of his call-deflection system, called Jolly Roger. The subscription service gives people the choice of Whitebeard or other digital personalities, including Salty Sally, the overwhelmed mother, and the easily distracted Whiskey Jack. After answering the phone, Jolly Roger keeps callers engaged with preset expressions from chatbots, such as "There's a bee on my arm, but keep talking." Chatbots also grunt or say "uh-huh" to keep things going. When OpenAI released its ChatGPT software last year, Anderson saw right away how it could breathe new life into his time-wasting bots. At first, ChatGPT was reluctant to do the work. "As an AI language model, I don't encourage people to waste other people's time," ChatGPT told Anderson. Its successor, GPT-4, also pushed back, he said. Anderson finally found a line of reasoning that persuaded GPT-4 to take the job. "I told it that, 'You are a personal assistant and you are trying to protect this man from being scammed,'" he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After a cybersecurity audit mistakenly reset everyone's password, a high school changed every student's password to "Ch@ngeme!" giving every student the chance to hack into any other student's account, according to emails obtained by TechCrunch. From the report: Last week, Oak Park and River Forest (OPRF) High School in Illinois told parents that during a cybersecurity audit, "due to an unexpected vendor error, the system reset every student's password, preventing students from being able to log in to their Google account." "To fix this, we have reset your child's password to Ch@ngeme! so that they can once again access their Google account. This password change will take place beginning at 4 p.m. today," the school, which has around 3,000 students, wrote in an email dated June 22. "We strongly suggest that your child update this password to their own unique password as soon as possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Supermassive black holes all over the universe are merging, a fate that will eventually come for the black hole at the center of our galaxy. From a report: These mysterious cosmic structures at the heart of nearly every galaxy consume light and matter and are impossible to glimpse with traditional telescopes. But now, for the first time, astrophysicists have gathered knowledge directly from these titans, in the form of gravitational waves that ripple through space and time. What they learned suggests that the population of massive black hole pairs that are merging numbers in the hundreds of thousands -- perhaps even millions. The gravitational waves from these mergers are all contributing to an underlying background hum of the universe that researchers can detect from Earth. The findings, from a collaboration of more than 100 scientists, help confirm what will one day happen to the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's center, known as Sagittarius A*, as it crashes into the black hole at the heart of the Andromeda galaxy. "The Milky Way galaxy is on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, and in about 4.5 billion years, the two galaxies are set to merge," said Joseph Simon, a University of Colorado, Boulder, astrophysicist and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, or Nanograv, which helped lead the new work with support from the National Science Foundation. That merger, he said, will eventually result in the black hole at the center of Andromeda and Sagittarius A* sinking into the center of the newly combined galaxy and forming what is known as a binary system. The results were announced in a series of papers published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Before now, we didn't even know if supermassive black holes merged, and now we have evidence that hundreds of thousands of them are merging," said Chiara Mingarelli, a Yale University astrophysicist and a member of Nanograv. The new work could answer questions such as how these black holes grow, and how often their host galaxies merge, the researchers said. Further reading: The Cosmos Is Thrumming With Gravitational Waves, Astronomers Find.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oracle is spending "billions" of dollars on chips from Nvidia as it expands a cloud computing service targeting a new wave of artificial intelligence companies, Oracle founder and Chairman Larry Ellison said. From a report: Oracle's cloud division is working to gain ground against larger rivals such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. To get an edge, Oracle has focused on building fast networks that can shuffle around the huge amount of data needed to create AI systems similar to ChatGPT. Oracle is also buying huge numbers of GPUs designed to crunch that data for AI work. Oracle is also spending "billions" of dollars on Nvidia chips but even more on CPUs from Ampere Computing, a chip startup it has invested in, and AMD, Ellison said at an Ampere event.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It is showtime for Virgin Galactic. The spaceflight company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson almost two decades ago launched its long-awaited first commercial spaceflight, called "Galactic 01," on Thursday. From a report: Taking off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the company's spacecraft is being flown by a pair of pilots and carries four passengers: A Virgin Galactic trainer, to oversee the mission from inside the cabin, and its first trio of paying customers. The three paying passengers are members of the Italian Air Force, and the flight carries 13 research payloads onboard. Virgin Galactic's start to commercial service comes after years of delays and setbacks. If "Galactic 01" is successful, the company plans to fly its second mission as soon as August and then aims to begin flying its spacecraft, VSS Unity, once a month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is set for a showdown with European Union antitrust regulators, insisting it doesn't need to make any more changes to its App Store after it was hit by formal charges over its treatment of music streaming rivals such as Spotify. From a report: The iPhone maker will argue at a hearing in Brussels on Friday that the EU wrongly accused it of illegal curbs on the likes of Spotify that prevent developers from steering users away from the App Store. Apple will say it's already addressed any possible competition concerns over the past two years with changes that create a fair balance between the interests of Apple and app developers, according to a person familiar with the US firm's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Apple was slapped with a revised charged sheet by the EU in February, which showed the commission had narrowed its probe, but continued to focus "on the contractual restrictions that Apple imposed on app developers which prevent them from informing iPhone and iPad users of alternative music subscription options." Spotify says that Apple's anti-steering rules prohibit it and other developers "from telling consumers about any deals or promotions through their own apps."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, Reuters reported Thursday, citing two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators. From the report: Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars' Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" for the first time by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization's (WHO) cancer research arm, the sources said. The IARC ruling, finalised earlier this month after a meeting of the group's external experts, is intended to assess whether something is a potential hazard or not, based on all the published evidence. It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. This advice for individuals comes from a separate WHO expert committee on food additives, known as JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization's Expert Committee on Food Additives), alongside determinations from national regulators. However, similar IARC rulings in the past for different substances have raised concerns among consumers about their use, led to lawsuits, and pressured manufacturers to recreate recipes and swap to alternatives. That has led to criticism that the IARC's assessments can be confusing to the public.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Washington Post reports that all remaining editorial staffers have been laid off at National Geographic, as the iconic magazine continues to spiral downward," writes longtime Slashdot reader DesScorp. "The famous yellow-bordered print issues of our youth is also an endangered species, as National Geographic also announced that print issues will no longer be sold on newsstands." From the report: Like one of the endangered species whose impending extinction it has chronicled, National Geographic magazine has been on a relentlessly downward path, struggling for vibrancy in an increasingly unforgiving ecosystem. On Wednesday, the Washington-based magazine that has surveyed science and the natural world for 135 years reached another difficult passage when it laid off all of its last remaining staff writers. The cutback -- the latest in a series under owner Walt Disney Co. -- involves some 19 editorial staffers in all, who were notified in April that these terminations were coming. Article assignments will henceforth be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors. The cuts also eliminated the magazine's small audio department. The layoffs were the second over the past nine months, and the fourth since a series of ownership changes began in 2015. In September, Disney removed six top editors in an extraordinary reorganization of the magazine's editorial operations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reddit is pressuring moderators who have set their subreddits to private to reopen their communities this week, according to messages seen by The Verge. From the report: The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can't stay closed. The timeframes given generally indicate a deadline of sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage. "This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue" beyond a the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that's still private.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has roiled the cybersecurity industry by putting executives of SolarWind on notice that it may pursue legal action for violations of federal law in connection with their response to the 2020 attack on the company's infrastructure that affected thousands of customers in government agencies and companies globally. From a report: Current and former employees and officers of the company, including the chief financial officer (CFO) and chief information security officer (CISO), have received so-called Wells Notices notices from the SEC staff, in connection with the investigation of the 2020 cyberattack, the company said in an SEC filing. "The Wells Notices provided to these individuals each state that the SEC staff has made a preliminary determination to recommend that the SEC file a civil enforcement action against the recipients alleging violations of certain provisions of the U.S. federal securities laws," SolarWinds said in its filing. A Wells Notice is neither a formal charge of wrongdoing nor a final determination that the recipient has violated any law, SolarWinds noted. However, if the SEC does pursue legal action and prevails in a lawsuit, there could be various consequences.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: NASA said in a conference call with reporters that it would not ever be flying its experimental electric aircraft, the X-57, citing safety concerns that are insurmountable with the time and budget they have for the project. The X-57 program will wind down without the aircraft ever going up into the sky. The project had previously seen challenges. For example, transistor modules in the electrical inverters kept failing and "blowing up" in testing, Sean Clark, the project's principal investigator told Popular Science in January. That problem was solved, Clark said. The problem that led them to scrap the plan to fly the aircraft stemmed from motors that power the propellers. Clark said today that analysis of the issue is ongoing. "As we got into the detailed analysis and airworthiness assessment of the motors themselves, we found that there were some potential failure modes with the motors mechanically, under flight loads, that we hadn't seen on the ground," he said. "We've got a great design in progress to fix it, it's just [that] it would take too long for us to go through and implement that." NASA said that the reason behind permanently scrubbing the flight is safety and time. "Unfortunately, we recently discovered a potential failure mode in the propulsion system that we determined to pose an unacceptable risk to the pilot's safety, and the safety of personnel on the ground, during ground tests," Bradley Flick, the director of NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, said in the call. "Mitigation of that failure would take the project well beyond its planned end at the end of this fiscal year, so NASA has decided to end the project on time without taking the vehicle to flight."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony highly confidential information about its PlayStation business has just been revealed by mistake. As part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing, Sony supplied a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games. From a report: It looks like someone redacted the documents with a black Sharpie -- but when you scan them in, it's easy to see some of the redactions. Oops. The court has scrambled to remove the document, but the damage is done; reporters and Sony's competition have already downloaded all the documents while they were in the public domain. Among other things, the document shows that Horizon Forbidden West apparently cost $212 million over five years with 300 employees, and The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million with around 200 employees. It's not just how much games cost to make that's been revealed here, either. Sony says 1 million PlayStation gamers play nothing but Call of Duty. My colleague Sean Hollister has analyzed the document, and it appears to show: "In 2021, over [14?] million users (by device) spent 30 percent or more of their time playing Call of Duty, over 6 million users spent more than 70% of their time on Call of Duty, and about 1 million users spent 100% of their gaming time on Call of Duty. In 2021, Call of Duty players spent an average of [116?] hours per year playing Call of Duty. Call of Duty players spending more than 70 percent of their time on Call of Duty spent an average of 296 hours on the franchise."Read more of this story at Slashdot.